One of the "10 top books for summer": ARC's Faith in Food

July 21, 2014:

ARC's Faith in Food is one of the Sustainable Food Trust's top ten books for summer calling it: "the most beautiful of reference books to be pulled down when you want a rounded look at GMOs, insight into dietary laws or simply a powerful and poetic reminder of why our food choices have moral and ethical impacts."

Sustainable Food Trust review

Faith in Food: Changing the world one meal at a time

Editors: Susie Weldon and Sue Campbell

In the past half a century we have adopted a dangerously destructive approach to farming, one which largely fails to give back to nature any return on what we have taken away, and one which subsequently finds itself contrary to the teachings of each and every one of the world’s major faiths.

Starting with this premise and speaking to atheists and believers alike, Faith in Food shares the strengths; the wisdoms and the learnings of six major religions’ approaches to agriculture, food procurement and dining.

What follows is a lively and holistic account of our myriad of food system issues. The book draws from the proclaimed spiritual qualities of food and earth and uses them as a prism to think to about systems of provisioning that work in harmony with our web of life, and which are not at the mercy of the increasingly fluctuating price of oil.

Packed with inspiring stories, hard hitting facts and calls to action, this book is both a comprehensive guide to ethical eating and an anthropological expose of global approaches to food and agriculture. Far from digestible in one sitting, Faith in Food, should take a roll as the most beautiful of reference books there to be pulled down when you want a rounded look at GMOs, insight into dietary laws or simply a powerful and poetic reminder of why our food choices have moral and ethical impacts.

Did you know?

• Agriculture is the largest industry on the planet, employing more than one billion people worldwide and influencing the way half the world’s habitable land is cared for.

• Women farmers produce more than half of all food worldwide.

• Sikhs feed an estimated 30 million people worldwide every day with free food provided in their gurdwaras

• Nearly a billion people do not have enough to eat, even though sufficient food is produced worldwide.

• Thousands of Jewish households in North America and Israel have put nearly $5 million into sustainable farming by linking up with local farmers through Community Supported Agriculture.

• Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.

• When the New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, USA – an American ‘mega-church’ – began thinking about food and faith issues, it calculated how many events it holds at which food is served. The total was 9,000 a year.

• Up to 30% of our individual carbon footprint comes from the food we eat, from farm gate to dinner plate, including transport and storage, says Patrick Holden, founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust.

• Increasing numbers of Daoists in China have banned the use of ingredients from endangered plants and animals in food and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

• Replacing red meat and dairy with vegetables one day a week would be the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles less per year, according to a 2007 Carnegie Mellon University study.

Faith in foodFaith in Food is about people of faith honouring their values in the food they eat. Food has always played a central role in religious life – in worship and celebration, through foods that are sacred, prasad or forbidden, and in communion and Passover, Ramadan and harvest festivals.

July 15, 2014:Confucius returns to the mainland: South China Morning Post storyThe heat was intense. As the speakers took the podium in the gardens of Shenzhen Polytechnic a young woman fainted. Within a few seconds, a second student followed... article by ARC's Victoria Finlay on the return of Confucianism, ARC's latest faith partner.

June 19, 2014:PRESS RELEASE: Faith in Food, wonderful new bookWhen a young boy says: ‘It’s easier to get a gun in our neighbourhood than it is to get a salad,’ and he’s not standing in the middle of a war zone, then we know there is something wrong with our attitude towards food and where it comes from.